Mrs. Arbuthnot pondered. The gravity of her mien was enormous.
"Well, if you tell Reggie Brasset, you must give me your word of honour that you positively won't speak of it to another living being. Strictly incog., you know, and if it got out there might be serious international complications. Of course I had to write and tell Mama, else she would never have let me have Thomas. Besides, she is consulting Uncle Harry upon one or two points of etiquette."
"Oh, is she! Evidently going to be a devilish well-kept secret this is!"
"I should think it is. Why, I haven't even told Mary Catesby, yet I suppose I shall have to, because she is frightfully well up in that sort of thing."
"If you don't disdain a word of advice from a lowly quarter," said I, modestly, "you will leave Mary Catesby out of your calculations."
My only guerdon was the flash of an imperious china-blue eye. Other reward there was none.
"Seems to me," said Jodey, "we had better have Brasset to dine with us pretty often. You will want somebody to talk to the old buffer. I'm not much of a hand at conversation myself."
"No, Joseph," I ventured to remark, "but you are good and brave and modest. How goes the ballad that Irene so charmingly discourses? 'Be good, sweet child, and let who will be clever.'"
I desisted, for from two points of the compass a double-distilled Vane-Anstruther gaze was trained upon me. My relation by marriage drank his coffee and fished out a vile old pipe, and lit it amid the most magniloquent silence to which I have ever been a contributor.
But events were moving apace. The passing of each day brought us sensibly nearer the all-important event. With advice and aid from her Royal Highness, Mrs. Arbuthnot proceeded to set her house in order with no uncertainty. The King liked a room with a south aspect, it appeared, and a bath-room leading out of his dressing-room. By a special dispensation of providence these things happened to be forthcoming. Red was the predominant hue of the carpet and bed-hangings in the chamber of state. The picturesque fancy occurred to Mrs. Arbuthnot that purple would be more appropriate. Her Royal Highness thought it really didn't matter, but Joseph Jocelyn De Vere, who was called in to arbitrate, concurred with Mrs. Arbuthnot. The bill from Waring's was £65 12s. 9d. less five per cent. discount for cash.